Chega wants to suspend the entry of foreigners until the completion of ongoing processes

This Friday, Chega proposed to the government to suspend the entry into Portugal of immigrants from outside the community until all pending regularization processes have been completed.

Speaking to journalists before a short rally in Setúbal, alongside the head of the list for the European elections, the Chegi leader said that the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) was analyzing “half a million requests”, and proposed: a suspension of entry into the country until immigrants who are not already legalized here will not be legalized,” in other words, “closing borders to immigrants from other communities.”

“No one understands that in a crowded house we keep the door open,” he said, noting that “as long as the house is in order, we lock the door.”

André Ventura said that Portugal cannot “continue to open its doors if it cannot regularize those already on its territory,” going further than the initiative that the parliamentary group presented this Friday before the Assembly of the Republic.

In the draft resolution (an initiative that does not have the force of law), Chega recommends that the government “immediately suspend the issuance of any new residence permits until all those cases currently pending before AIMA have been analyzed and decisions made.”

Regarding the 100 employees who want to leave AIMA, Andre Ventura said that “the priority must be to strengthen” the organization, but warned that these people need to undergo training.

“We cannot, while we train and don’t train, while we call and don’t call, allow migrants to invade the country,” he said.

Regarding the need for foreign labor, Andre Ventura believed that these 500 thousand people could be sent to companies that need them.

“Otherwise we will have more immigrants than people… than Portuguese, and I think that is not good,” he said.

The Chegi leader said Portugal could “close its borders to these immigrants until the situation is under control” as “countries have their own autonomy in the Schengen area.”

“We are talking about immigrants from outside, and Portugal is currently experiencing an exceptional situation,” he said, believing that “radical measures are needed to prevent the mass and uncontrolled entry of people.”

The Chegi leader suggested that the police would undertake the check.

Ventura also said that in the meantime he hopes to “draw the attention of the government to the introduction of new, stricter rules for entry into the country”, and that he will talk to the PSD parliamentary group to find a solution that will allow the “reconstruction of an agency that can oversee these processes and into which no one else can enter, except under exceptional conditions permitted by law,” until Portugal puts “its house in order.”

Chegi’s list leader in the European elections pointed out that “citizens from Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan cannot enter Portugal without a visa” and that “the Schengen area requires this to be the case” but there are immigrants who “arrive here without a visa and move in.”

When asked how this was possible, António Tangier Correa, clearly irritated by the insistence of the journalists, replied: “Go to the airport and look. Who will get there? All of them, Indians and these guys who need a visa, without a visa. “

The former ambassador said that “lately the law has not been respected” and that “Chega wants the law to be applied”, it is not about “abolition of visas”.

Andre Ventura took the floor again to insist that the party was proposing to “suspend the entry of people from outside, outside the community” and that these immigrants “will not have visas” because “with half a million to regularize”, the country cannot “regularize any more “